The Story of the Space Core
by TheInfinityProject
Summary: While I'm sure it's been done before, this sequel to Portal 2 following the Space Personality Core has a few unexpected twists...


"Space! Space! I'm in Space!" said the Space Personality Core.

He had been floating in Space for thousands of years, but he didn't know that. She had sent him there, that's all he knew. All he cared about.

It had been his life's dream to be in Space ever since he had been created. He always told the scientists he wanted to go, but they wouldn't send him. "Corrupted", they called him. "Wrong", they called him.

He wasn't any of these things. He was a Space core.

"Space! Space! Hey, Shutter, I'm in Space!" He yelled again. A huge, white ship loomed in front of him. He knew it was Aperture Science's _Shutter_, the only ship that Aperture, along with GLaDOS (Before she went insane) successfully sent to Space. It was lost on its last mission, never to be seen or heard from again.

He had studied all the archives in Aperture Laboratories about Space and any kind of accessible material about Space. Space was his entire life. It made up every part of him and that wasn't a problem. Space was everything.

Then GLaDOS came. He was meant to be a part of her, but the scientists still thought of him as "corrupt", and "wrong". They tossed him away, to the bowels of the Facility, with all the other "corrupted" cores. He stayed there for many, many years. 99,999,999 days, in fact. Everything changed on that fateful day…

The last subject, a former scientist named Chell, was awoken from Cryo. She had been asleep for longer than any human ever. She was thrust into testing, just like any other test subject would. There was something missing though, and Space Core knew that.

GLaDOS was nowhere to be heard.

_She isn't following the protocol. She HAS to help the test subject. Where is she? Why isn't she talking?_ Space Core thought. _Could it be? Has she really shut off after all this time?_

The Facility hummed to life.

_Chell must've activated her. Why? GLaDOS was insane… Is she suicidal? She's gonna die!_

"Oh… It's _you_. It's been a long time. How have you been?" All the Corrupts heard her. "I've been really busy being dead."

Time passes… Hours, at the least. Nothing happens… For a long time. Everything goes quiet, and dark.

Then Danger core is yanked from the cage. The Corrupts hear a loud explosion. Everything is quiet again.

Then the claw comes down again and takes another core. He's taken up and there's another explosion. Everything dies down again.

The claw comes down again and all the Corrupts start yelling for it to pick them, but Space Core only wants to go to Space. He doesn't care about the claw.

The claw grabs Space Core. He's yanked up and Chell grabs him from a dangling cord. A massive arm hangs from the ceiling of the room. On its end, another core. This one's eye is blue, and he talks in a British accent. He's trying to kill Chell, just like GLaDOS had. Chell dodges the bombs flying at her like its nothing, it's almost amazing to see a human preform such maneuvers.

The Space Core tries to make some small talk to her, wondering if she's gonna send him to Space. Chell doesn't respond, apparently mute. She manages to maneuver her Portals to disorient the blue core with his own bombs, and he stops moving. Everything grows quiet for the Space Core. The next few moments are a blur. Chell uses propulsion gel coupled with repulsion gel to get up to another Core port on the blue core's body, and plugs Space Core in.

"CORE CORRUPTION AT 100%" he hears over the intercom. The blue core wakes up, suddenly alert again.

"Urrrgh!" He says, and begins to babble about this and that, not wanting to go corrupt, and even Space. Space Core is happy to hear the word. The blue core is seemingly incoherent, hearing the voices of the corrupt cores attached to him.

Then the Space Core hears GLaDOS. She's quieter than usual, as if trapped in a potato. Space Core strains his ears to listen, but can't fully hear what GLaDOS is saying. All he hears is whispers.

Chell continues to evade the bombs with ease, watching both her Portal Gun and the blue core Space Core knows now as Wheatley, a failed experiment to keep GLaDOS in control a long time ago. He thought he had seen pictures of the blue core before.

Chell darts to the control panel on the far side of Wheatley's, formerly GLaDOS', chamber, takes something from the OPERATIONAL END OF THE DEVICE (That was written in red, bold text on Space Core's knowledge base) and puts it on the panel.

"Core 1, are you ready?" The voice on the intercom talked again.

"Yes, yes let's go!" GLaDOS' voice boomed now. She was the one on the control panel!

"Core 2, are you ready?" Said the intercom.

"Whaddaya bloody think?" said Wheatley. He had pulled most of himself together.

"Interpreting vague answer as 'Yes'" The intercom spoke again.

"NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!" Wheatley exclaimed.

"Stalemate detected; awaiting Stalemate Representative to press the Stalemate Resolution Button." A hatch opened on the far side of the chamber from Chell.

Thinking quickly, she Portaled over to it. As she approached the button, though, walls sprung up in her way, and she banged her head against them obviously not expecting the walls to be there. Wheatley laughed in victory, but he had thought too soon. Chell quickly caught her wits about her and shot a portal on the roof of the Stalemate Resolution Button Room and shot one below her. She landed on the floor between the walls and the button, went to press it, but before she could Wheatley snickered again and lowered all the walls.

A pile of bombs taller than Chell was there, exploded, and sent her flying backward. She landed right under Wheatley, who shot a bomb to the roof in a glee of beating her. It exploded there, opening it to the night sky. The moon shined brightly in the dark night, reminding Chell of something.

Remembering that Cave Johnson had said that the Portal-able surface gel was made of ground-up moon rocks, she shot straight for it. The blue portal twinkled on the surface, and all hell broke loose. The orange portal under Wheatley sucked him in along with the Space Core. And that is where Space Core's journey begins.

Space Core is sucked into the Shutter's main hold. He floats through the Space in the Shutter's thin corridors, passing humans that are long-dead and destroyed by the absence of atmosphere. He eventually stops in a long room. Humanoid robots stood along each wall, they're spherical heads down. They looked strikingly similar to Space Core, but had arms and legs.

As Space Core floated through, lights turned on above each of the Bots. They all kept their heads down, as if waiting for the Core to pass.

Eventually, Space Core floats to the end of the long room. He is pulled into a carriage similar to the ones that the other Bot's have, but bigger. He snaps onto the carriage and a new interface shows over his optical sensor. He is suddenly inundated with new information involving Space, Aperture Science, and everything in between. He slowly learns to walk in the carriage, how to control it and what its functions are. He finds that the right hand – a jumble of micro robotic parts that can be used to form any shape he so desires – is good for picking things up and the such, and the left hand – a drill – can be used to cut through the hard metal walls of the ship. He suddenly hears a soft whir behind him and turns to find all the Bots had woken up, and stood behind him as if waiting for orders.

"Well, boys…" Space Core says, his voice much deeper than before. "Are you ready to solve science?"

The Bots don't move. Space Core shrugs, and decides to continue searching his now massive database of information.

The Bots go back to their short pedestals when Space Core sits down at the end of the room. He searches for information about the Bots and finds that he was actually supposed to join these Cores but somehow a machine screwed up and gave him the ability to speak and think for himself. He also finds out his codename during his creation, Alex. He liked that name, and it seemed to almost open something up in his brain that wasn't there before.

He found out that the core-holding carriages were eventually parts of two robots that GLaDOS used to test with after Chell escaped, codenamed Atlas and P-Body. They eventually unlocked the door to the Infinity Cryo room, where hundreds of thousands of humans lost and forgotten by family and friends signed their lives away, giving Aperture full control as to when they wake up or how long they sleep.

Alex also found that he could control the entire ship right from where he sat. The table gave him a fully interactive holographic interface where he could choose a location anywhere in the observable universe (and then some), and the ship would go to it. He chose a location not far from the Milky Way, which by now is a giant ball of burning gas, the Sun had expanded so much that there was no more planets. Or moons. Or _Aperture._

Alex thought that word with a poisonous sting to it. He had found lab reports and the such containing information about what scientists thought of him.

_Failure. Broken. Insane. _He rolled those words over in his head.

It made him want to kill every single one of those bastards, painfully and slowly. He had full control of everything, now. He was God. There was no more wanting for space and people turning Alex down, now it was only space. And all of it is his.

Alex got up from the Ship's interface and turned around. He had found a way to turn the wall behind him transparent, like a window. He stares out upon the massive space, ready to explore it all.

"It's… It's so beautiful." He whispers to no one in particular. He hears the same whirring behind him as before. He turns, and another of the Bots stands there, staring at him. He looks around to see which of the Bots it is, but he sees all the pedestals are occupied. "Well, hello there. Who might you be?"

"My name is Ben… Alex, is that you?" It's a nervous child's voice, and it isn't coming from the Core in the carriage, but in Alex's head.

"Hello, Ben… And yes, my name is Alex, but how do you know that?" Alex replies.

"Uh… I'll explain. Sit down." Ben sits at the table, and Alex finds that he is significantly taller than Ben, as if he really is a child.


End file.
